


sometimes

by sunflower_8



Series: amasai week 2020 !! [6]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Canon, not very relationship-y
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:21:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23251627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflower_8/pseuds/sunflower_8
Summary: shuichi thinks of them all,but rantaro is different.(or, shuichi thinks about the ultimate adventurer)
Relationships: Amami Rantaro/Saihara Shuichi, Harukawa Maki & Saihara Shuichi
Series: amasai week 2020 !! [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1665994
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	sometimes

_ try again. _

_ think it over and try again, _

_ think harder, shuichi. _

_ try again and you _

_ could save _

_ him.  _

\--

shuichi still thinks of him sometimes.

he thinks of all of them, in truth. ryoma’s bones, picked clean, and angie’s smile, dishonest, haunt his dreams. when he wakes up screaming, it’s because he sees kaede with her thin fingers ghosting a piano. she hugs him, overwhelming him with a scent of honeysuckle that dissolves on his tongue when the music plays. shuichi talks to kaito, too, in dreams accented with loud, scratchy coughs.

shuichi thinks of them all,

but rantaro is different.

he confuses him, and that’s not something he should really think about after his death. the one difference between him and the others, though, is that he will  _ never  _ understand him. he’s accumulated news clippings and watched the old games, seeing the person he was through his own eyes…

… but he still doesn’t  _ fucking _ understand. 

shuichi wants to have a minute with them all. a minute to talk, to hug them, to absolve himself from his guilt. with rantaro, he doesn’t feel like apologizing. he doesn’t want to hold him, to smell the scent of evergreen; he doesn’t want to cry to him. he just wants to understand him, the mind of someone who has seen countless deaths, been thousands of versions of himself. the person who wanted to fucking win. 

he wanted to ask why he ever wanted to win.

in the game, he didn’t care about him. well, correction-- he cared about all of the participants. he cries over miu and longs to speak to kokichi again. but he was always skeptical of rantaro; he was never close to him. 

when maki and himiko make him cookies after a nightmare, it’s not because he was awake thinking about rantaro’s face and hair and sad fucking eyes. they never even consider that. because shuichi never loved him in the game. he never wanted him.

now, rantaro is dead (finally, after five seasons) and shuichi can’t stop thinking about him.

one morning, drinking from a cup of coffee he had made himself, he asks maki, “do you ever think about rantaro sometimes?”

she raises her eyebrow, looking up from the book she is reading. her eyes are still shadowed, face skinny as she tries to fight away the memories. she bites her lip and breaks eye contact again, looking down. “not really,” she says truthfully. “should i?”

“i mean, not necessarily.” shuichi responds. “he’s just… been filling my thoughts lately.” he looks up at the ceiling and closes his eyes. his voice falls to a whisper when he says, “if i could bring anybody back, even for a minute, it would be him.”

maki doesn’t judge him. she never does. instead, she just says, “why?”

“we never got to know him.”

that settles the conversation.

later that night, shuichi closes the front door quietly and steps onto the patio, looking up at the stars. they’re bright and brilliant, clearer than ever here, where they are far from the noise. as he watches, he thinks he can see the moon morph into a face, forming a teenage boy in celestial light. shuichi reaches out to him, letting himself believe in fantasy.

even though maki and himiko (and him, but less important) are alive and safe, striving for recovery, even though the killing show is cancelled, even though he’s feeling so much  _ happier  _ than he used to…

… he thinks he got the bad ending.

**Author's Note:**

> very poorly written i know
> 
> i was going to gift this to someone but it's. not very well written. so if i do something tomorrow then yeah.
> 
> prompt was happy ending // sad ending. i went w/ sad
> 
> yeah. bye


End file.
